Bangert: In the pursuit of 'funkify' - reward funky Community of Choice ideas

Oct. 3, 2012

Room for more dog parks, such as the one Jack the golden retriever was enjoying at the Dog Park in Lafayette? The Community of Choice plan suggests that's one way to 'funkify' Greater Lafayette. / File photo

“Forbes magazine this week named Silver Lake, Calif., as the hippest neighborhood in the U.S. ... Although, Forbes magazine telling you what’s hip is kind of like hearing your dad say, ‘For shizzle.’ ”

Too true. In the totally self-aware pursuit of being ahead of whatever’s next, few things sap the juice of a hip find like having some well-meaning, out-of-the-loop voice declare it jazzy pizzazzy.

So at the risk of taking the funk right out of “funkify” — that nudge Community of Choice consultants gave Greater Lafayette toward embracing the hip and the out of the ordinary — how about rewarding those who do it best?

Last week, Greater Lafayette Commerce — the business organization that financed the new “From Good to Great: Making Greater Lafayette a Community of Choice” report — handed out nearly a dozen awards during its annual dinner. The honors covered everything from historic preservation to downtown development, from top young talent to diversity leaders.

Why not the top funkifier in 2013?

A definition’s in order first.

On one of the final pages of its 54-page report on quality of life, Next Generation Consulting adds a funkify appendix to its eight-part plan to help make Greater Lafayette a place where young talent of all sorts might be more likely to choose. According to the New Abridged Next Generation Dictionary: “Funkify — (v) to transform something traditional into something modern or stylish in an unconventional way.”

“To become a place where all people feel comfortable and welcomed, the region needs to find — and develop — its funkiness,” the report says. “It needs to cultivate its less conventional and more ‘nichey’ aspects. ... It needs to stop playing it so safe and let a few freak flags fly.”

(Page 2 of 3)

OK, so it’s been awhile since anyone’s let a literal freak flag reference fly. But point taken, just the same.

Next Generation’s report leaves behind a dozen ideas of the funkify variety. They aren’t bad, as far as conversation starters go.

1. Turn the vacant Home Hospital into a working artist studio, along the lines of what was done in the ’70s and ’80s in Alexandra, Va., to transform an abandoned military plant into the Torpedo Factory. The site now hosts 82 artists’ studios, six galleries and the Alexandria Archaeology Museum. (Better hurry if you want to save the hulking Home Hospital building, though; hospital officials say the building might need to come down to finally offload the property.)

2. Build a parking deck near Purdue, incorporating public art similar to the vinyl decal concepts of Urbana, Ill.’s Murals on Glass project.

5. Allow the Friends of Bob live music co-op to book acts at Long Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Lafayette for the next 12 months. That might be a tall order for a volunteer-run group that has built its own funkify cred over the past 18 years by getting national acts tailor-made for Duncan Hall, upstairs at Lafayette Brewing Company and other, cozier venues. But putting the beautiful, 1,190-seat Long Center into more frequent rotation for touring acts would be terrific.

9. Start a “buy local” initiative. Challenge residents to do all of their holiday shopping locally with members of a buy local alliance.

10. Along the same lines, challenge the community to an “eat local” campaign for one month each year.

11. Start another co-op grocery store.

12. Start a Pecha Kucha event series. Pecha Kucha, a concept that originated in Japan, invites people to present 20 slides and gives them 20 seconds to talk about each one. The slides could be about an architecture project, a collection, poetry, a travelogue ... or anything. The point is to bring people to talk about what they love, but in a limited time, to spread the creative wealth.

All 12 of those speak to niche markets and aren’t going to float everyone’s boat. (One in particular speaks to why I walk by the Murdock Park disc golf course at 18th and Cason streets and think: Huh? Then again, the course keeps expanding with demand, so who am I to say?) But that’s the funkify theme here.

There’s a power in a niche. String together enough of those things — things that hit small pockets of the community’s sensibilities — and who knows what kind of feel this community could have.

As for an award from the suits at Greater Lafayette Commerce in the name of those who dare to funkify, if Forbes can get away with an awkward what’s-up to hipster neighborhoods, why not? Cue Seth Meyers.